She has her own title now: 'Pro'

Michelle Smith, Chronicle Staff Writer

Published
4:00 am PDT, Sunday, June 23, 2002

Kristin Folkl's athletic gifts have, without a doubt, a genetic component. When the former Stanford two-sport All-American has been asked about her family's sporting tree, she's always talked about how her father used to play baseball in the park on Sundays.

But what about her mother?

"I always answer that I think she would have been an athlete, but there were no programs available to her," Folkl said. "Wow, how strange is that? She might have been a great athlete, but there was simply nowhere for her to participate.

"You think you wouldn't miss something you never had, but part of me knows my mom knew exactly what she was missing. I think she wanted it, and she couldn't have it."

So Marilyn Folkl gave it to her daughter, signing her up for sports as early as Kristin's fourth birthday, hoping to give her only daughter an outlet for the energy that left the preschooler frequently hanging perilously from the bars of the swing set in the backyard. Folkl played everything. Softball,

basketball, volleyball, gymnastics, soccer. No one ever denied her a thing.

Even now, two decades later, the 26-year-old Folkl is still participating, and at a level the women of her mother's generation viewed as more of a fantasy than an eventuality.

Folkl is a starting forward for the Portland Fire of the WNBA, the women's professional basketball league that is in its sixth season. As a collegiate volleyball star, she narrowly missed securing a spot on the 1996 Olympic team that competed in Atlanta.

"I have never known anything except equality," Folkl said. "I never had a case where I didn't have a jersey because the boys needed better ones. I never had to practice at midnight because the boys team was using the gym. I have never had to fight for anything." Because of her mother, and the stories she's heard from her friend's mothers about their spartan athletic experience, Folkl said she does not take her experience for granted.

referring to value of the athletic scholarship she received at Stanford. "It's because of Title IX that I played in great facilities and for great coaches and had a chance to travel to play the best competition."

Folkl's athletic experience hasn't been about achieving opportunity, but capitalizing on it. That is the way, Folkl believes, she has staged her own fight on behalf of Title IX.

"The things I have been able to do haven't all just fallen in my lap," Folkl said. "I didn't have to create a team to play on; when I wanted to play, there was a team I could go to. But when you are given a chance like that, it's your decision what to do with it.

"I tell my parents all the time, 'Thank you for having me when you did, ' " Folkl said. "They just laugh. It's not something they really planned. I was just born at a great, great time."